Had initial phone screening and to say the interviewer was incompetent is an understatement. We logged on and everything was fine, question was a simple 1D version of candy crush, very simple to implement. I talked through my solution and began to code. As I was writing my code I asked a question and couldn't hear a response, his mic was off so I just assumed he was responding and asked him to turn mic on. Silence. Two minutes later I ask again and he responds and says 'sorry I left to go to the other room'. I was aghast.

Then he started looking at my code and couldn't understand my implementation. I kept having to re-explain what I was doing and he told me what I was doing was wrong and I should do an inner for loop. I listened and went ahead and did that, though I wasn't too sure why I needed to (my mistake, trust your instincts folks). I started coding and would talk through my solution as I went and he said I don't need to do that which made me feel like I was annoying him. Didn't turn off his mic and I kept hearing rustling of some wrapper throughout the interview, honestly it didn't feel like he was paying attention at all. I kept up with the implementation for 30 minutes but it wasn't working and then he asks me if I was sure my for loop was iterating and why I didn't initialise the variable.

Turns out he had very limited experience with Python and I had to explain how for loops were generated using the range function. Then he asked me why I was using a for loop and I said you told me to use a for loop and then he said oh sorry I misled you. Honestly, at this point, I started crying. Thank god my camera was not on. This was by far the worst interview experience I have ever had. I am a very competent coder but sometimes struggle when someome is just watching me code so the interviewer I get really affects me.

In my opinion this is such a poor reflection on the company and may be a blessing in disguise. I won't be getting through to the next stage but just wanted to prepare other people and talk about my experience. Maybe Bloomberg will see this and train their employees properly.